General News

Discrimination and racism are “mental and psychological diseases” that must be tackled through public policy,  just as a doctor cures a sick patient, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum told a rapt audience at the State Congress building Tuesday.

The Tarahumara Project, that longtime resident Libby Townsend thought would be a one time trip to aid the poverty stricken indigenous people residing on the northern rim of the Copper Canyon is now in it’s eighth year.

Jocotepec Mayor Juan O’Shea and dignitaries from Plymouth, California will exchange giant keys Friday, February 21 at a local celebration marking the official sealing of sister city ties between two communities noted for fruit production industries.

Hundreds of extra troops and federal police officers were deployed to Michoacan this week to restore order after self-defence groups seized several small towns as they sought to flush out members of the Knights Templar drug cartel in their strongholds in and around the city of Apatzingan.

Without the excessive ostentation so common in the past – although with disproportionate security, many citizens complained – Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval walked the short distance from his Guadalajara office to the Congress building on Tuesday to deliver his first annual state-of-the-state report (informe).

Zihuatanejo’s International Guitar Festival, tentatively scheduled this year from March 2-9, showcases guitar music of all genres and is an incredible achievement for a small group of volunteers with no corporate sponsors or big budgets. 

Reducing the violence plaguing the state of Michoacan will take more than tough words from government officials. Many communities around the world have found that getting young persons involved in cultural activities is a tried and tested method of lessening the temptations of crime.

In what is fast becoming a New Year tradition, the U.S. State Department has reissued a state-by-state travel advisory for Mexico, elaborating on its advice on visiting certain parts of Jalisco, Nayarit and Colima.